title: Light-energy conversion in engineered microorganisms.
abstract: Increasing interest in renewable resources by the energy and chemical industries has spurred new technologies both to capture solar energy and to develop biologically derived chemical feedstocks and fuels. Advances in molecular biology and metabolic engineering have provided new insights and techniques for increasing biomass and biohydrogen production, and recent efforts in synthetic biology have demonstrated that complex regulatory and metabolic networks can be designed and engineered in microorganisms. Here, we explore how light-driven processes may be incorporated into nonphotosynthetic microbes to boost metabolic capacity for the production of industrial and fine chemicals. Progress towards the introduction of light-driven proton pumping or anoxygenic photosynthesis into Escherichia coli to increase the efficiency of metabolically-engineered biosynthetic pathways is highlighted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology and Biophysics, 1479 Gortner Avenue, 140 Gortner Laboratory, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA.
authors.forename: Ethan T
authors.initials: ET
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Schmidt-Dannert
mesh_terms: D018407:Bacterial Physiological Phenomena / Q000528:radiation effects*; D004735:Energy Transfer / Q000502:physiology*; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000639:trends*; D008027:Light; D018462:Photobiology / Q000639:trends*; D045322:Photosynthetic Reaction Center Complex Proteins / Q000502:physiology* / Q000528:radiation effects
chemical_list: D045322:Photosynthetic Reaction Center Complex Proteins